This weekend at the Grosvenor Victoria in London, the wonderfully named Osman Mustanoglu fended off 44 other participants to become World Masters Champion.
Although numbers were few, the field, perhaps due to the £5,000 buy-in fee, certainly adopted a 'quality not quantity' philosophy. Faces such as Scott Fischman, Julan Gardner, John Kabbaj, Surinder Sunar, and Ram Vaswani all graced us with their presence, not to mention John 'saphire' Shipley, Mickey 'JimmySue' Wernick, Julian 'Hatwith' Adamson, Julian 'Yoyo' Thew, Dave 'elblondie' Colclough, Jim Reid, and Willie Tann, all of whom were proudly flying the blonde flag.
However, by the time we reached Day 3, we were down to just the four players, with old guard and Irish legend Liam 'The Gentleman' Flood as chipleader. Although he held in excess of a 100k chip advantage, Marc 'MrCool' Goodwin, Osman Mustanoglu, and Willie Tann were all hot on his heels, firmly intent on toppling the Late Night Poker veteran.
To the delight, although as a result of hindsight, of Marc Goodwin (above), the four remaining players decided to offer 4th place a minimum of £40,000, and it was indeed Mr Cool who took that unwanted, but still lucrative spot.
Whilst the charismatic Willie Tann took third, the quiet Osman Mustanoglu had taken the chip-lead off Liam (right) after previously spending the rest of the comp with relatively few chips.
After a long final day battle, it was Osman who eventually rose glorious when his pocket kings held up against Liam's top pair (Jack), then again with K-8 v 7-8 all-in preflop.
No outdraws, and Osman Mustanoglu was crowned champ.
Well done that man!